Addison Circle Park – Addison, Texas
Addison Circle Park is a Destination Park with over 10-acres of open space that serves as the special event site for Taste Addison, Kaboom Town, Oktoberfest, Addison After Dark, and many other events throughout the year. Bounded by Addison Road, Addison Circle Drive, Quorum Drive, and Festival Way has ample on-street and off-street parking. Features include a pavilion, restrooms, splash pad / interactive fountain, public display fountains, water features, two stages, an impressive pergola, benches, and off-street parking. Addison Outdoors (AO) provides program opportunities such as games, fitness classes, and the AO activity trailer at this location.
In the early 1990s, Addison, Texas community officials identified the lack of a coherent core as a major inhibitor to sustainable town growth. In a public/private initiative, the community took on a community vision process that envisioned a mixed-use downtown for the Dallas suburb—developing Addison Circle, a pioneer in suburban retrofit.
Addison Circle began as a vacant 80-acre site, later expanded to 124 acres, on the eastern edge of town between the Addison Airport and the Dallas Tollway. Through the community vision process led by RTKL (now CallisonRTKL) and development by Columbus Realty Trust (and completed by Post Properties), Addison Circle is now home to more than 2,400 residences, including brownstones, townhouses, condominiums, and apartments, plus 625,000 square feet of office, retail, and restaurant space adding up to over $500 million in private development.
The development has many parks and public spaces that serve the entire community, host festivals, and provide the community with the “coherent core” that it lacked. The layering of uses and mixing of architectural styles encourages a vibrant and active street life, enriches the public realm, and promotes self-policing throughout the area as residences overlook public streets and parks. Standards are set for landscaping, exterior materials, building scale, and parking.
The Addison Circle suburban retrofit is a prime example of a sustainable human-scaled urban neighborhood within a classic “edge city” setting. Unlike more typical suburban retrofits that redevelop existing developments such as malls into sustainable urban neighborhoods, Addison Circle is thought of as an edge city infill suburban retrofit. That is, the development filled vacant land within Addison rather than redeveloped existing developments. It was one of the first suburban developments of an entire downtown. It has given the community a core and a character that still charms 20 years on.
Since Addison Circle’s completion, developers in the Dallas region have recognized the powerful impact suburban retrofit can have. Highland Park Village, a historic upscale shopping center in Dallas, is undergoing an extensive renovation to enhance its sense of place. Legacy Town Center, once a typical suburban business park similar to Addison, has transformed into a retail district and walkable neighborhood.